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Free counseling available for healthcare workers, coronavirus patients and their families

Doctors and counselors are starting to see another kind of health problem from the COVID-19 pandemic.

NEW ORLEANS — After our story last Friday about free clinical trials to find cures for the coronavirus, Dr. Robert Jeanfreau started noticing something dramatic: Patients calling in to sign up for the studies were not only suffering physically, but “many are isolated and alone and scared.”

“Their mental suffering is intense,” he said. Many people taking those calls “repeatedly cried on the phone after hearing their stories.”

Cynthia Baptiste is one of those callers.

“Oh, I would just sit before the lord and I would just cry and cry and I would just say 'God, I know you in this with me, but you know … get me through this. Strengthen my children because you know, mothers don't like to see their children in pain.'”

Baptiste’s special needs son was in the hospital with COVID-19. Her children’s father had died of cancer and her daughter’s husband, at just 33-years-old, is in the hospital with COVID-19 as well.

“They have him on a ventilator and he done developed a blood clot, he done developed an infection,” she said. “I’m working with a lot right now.”

At that same time, she was sick with the coronavirus.

“Every morning I mean I would wake up with this terrible headache,” she said. “And then my body starting aching me.”

Dr. Jeanfreau reached out to licensed counselors Dean and Hollykem Sunseri who are now doing a free counseling program called “Voice Care.”

“It’s real important to manage our anxiety and to manage our fear,” Dean Sunseri said. “Because if we don’t we actually are becoming more vulnerable to the virus.”

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“The fear for the people that are stuck at home, that are sick and are alone, I think that that’s huge,” Hollykem Sunseri said.

Cynthia is doing two things to get through this pandemic. She signed up to give her blood in the study and she is relying heavily on her faith.

“I figured if we can find something to help to just help to solve this problem you know I want to be a part of it,” she said. “Stay faithful and believe in that you’re going to get through this.”

The free phone counseling is available for healthcare workers, first responders, coronavirus patients and their grieving family members. For more, call 504-264-1381.

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